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PROF. SHEDD'S ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



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AFRICA AND COLONIZATION 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE TUB 



ilta00acl)it5ctt0 (llolonijation Socictg, 



May 27, 1857. 



WILLIAM a. T. SHEDD, 



[From the Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1857.] 



ANDOVER: 
PRINTED BY WARREN F. DRAPER. 

1 857. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by 

WARREN F. DRAPER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachnsette. 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

On the 22d of March, 1775, Edmund Burke, pleading for 
the liberties of the American Colonies, in the British House 
of Commons, had occasion to allude to their marvellous 
growth, as outrunning everything of the kind in the then 
past history of England, or the world. In less than seventy 
years, he said, the trade with America had increased twelve- 
fold. It had grown from a half-million of pounds per an- 
num to six millions — a sum nearly equal to the whole ex- 
port trade of England at the commencement of the eighteenth 
century. This rapid growth, he continued, might all be span- 
ned by the life of a single man, " whose memory might touch 
the two extremities." Lord Bathurst was old enough, in 
1704, to understand the figures and the facts, as they then 
stood. The same Lord Bathurst, in 1775, was a member of 
that parliament, before whom the great orator was reciting 
the new facts that were stranger than fiction, in order to 
waken England to a consciousness that the colonies beyond 
the sea were bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, and 
must be treated accordingly. Warming from the gravity of 
his theme, and rising in soul as the vision slowly evolved be- 
fore him, he represents the guardian angel of the youthful 
Bathurst as drawing aside the curtain of the future and un- 
folding the rising glories of his country ; and particularly 
as pointing him, while absorbed in the commercial grandeur 
of England, to " a little speck scarce visible in the mass of 



the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than 
a formed body," and as saying to him : " Young man, there 
is America ; which, at this day, serves for little more than to 
amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth man- 
ners ; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal 
to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy 
of the world." ^ 

We have alluded to this well-known but ever fresh and 
fine prosopopoeia of the great Englishman, because it spon- 
taneously comes into memory when one commences to read, 
to think, or to speak upon Africa. That tropical continent 
lies nearly as dim and vague before the mind of this gene- 
ration, as the cold and cheerless America did before the 
mind of England when Johnson and Burke were boys. 
With the exception of a small strip of the Atlantic coast, 
the wilds of this Western world were as unknown to the Eng- 
lishman of 1700, as the jungles of Soudan or the highlands 
of Central Africa are to us. And yet it may be that there are 
youth of this generation who will live to see those dim be- 
ginnings of Christianity, of civilization, and of empire, 
which are now scarcely visible on the African Atlantic coast, 
expanded and still expanding into vigorous and vital 
churches, into strong and mighty States. The guardian ge- 
nius, in this instance too, might with perhaps as much 
probability of verification, say to the youth whom he leads 
by the hand : " Young man, there is Africa ; which, at this 
day, serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of 
savage men and uncouth manners ; yet it shall, before you 
taste of death, take its place among the continents, and be 
no longer an unknown world." 

For nothing is more wonderful than the changes and trans- 
formations of history. But involved, as every present genera- 
tion is, in the great stream, and whirled along by it, it is not 
strange that no generation of men are ever fully aware of the 
strength and rapidity of their own movement. He who be- 
longs to another generation, and looks back, can see that 
in such a century, and in such a quarter of the globe, a 

1 Sp;;ech on Conciliation witli America. 



mighty current was running. The spectator always sees 
more than the actor. The rare prophetic mind, also, that 
beholds the future in the instant, may foresee and predict 
a history too great and grand for contemporaneous belief. 
The philosophic statesman is aware of what is going on in 
the struggling masses around him, and auspicates accord- 
ingly. But the common man, of the busy present time, never 
knows the rate he is moving ; because he is, himself, ab- 
sorbed and carried headlong in the movement. It is not 
strange, therefore, that all hopeful, glowing vaticination, in 
respect to changes upon this sin-smitten planet, is regarded 
with distrust. Such anticipations are supposed to belong to 
the poet and the orator. They have no support in the data 
and calculations of the statician or the statesman. 

Called upon then, as we are at this time, to consider 
the present and prospective condition of the most wretched 
and unpromising quarter of the globe, by the voice of that 
Colonizing Society which has already done more than any 
other single association for the welfare of Africa, and which 
is destined, we believe, under that benign Providence which 
has protected and blessed it thus far, to see its own great 
ideas and plans realized ; called upon to speak and to think 
for a hundred millions of our fellow-creatures, by a small 
corporate body, not yet a half-century old, and annually dis- 
bursing only a few thousands of dollars, we desire to assign 
some reasons for believing that a career similar to that of the 
British colonies in America, and similar to that of all the 
great colonizing movements of the past, awaits the Republic 
of Liberia. 

What, then, are the grounds for expecting that the plans 
and purposes of the American Colonization Society will be 
ultimately realized in the Christianization of the African 
continent ? 

1. The first reason for this expectation is of a general na- 
ture. Africa has no past history. It is the continent of the 
future : for it is the only one now left to feel, for the first 
time, the recuperating influences of a Christian civilization. 
Religion, law, and letters began their march in Asia, and a 

1* 



large part of that continent once felt their influence. From 
thence they passed into Europe; and Europe is still the strong- 
hold of religion, law, and letters. Westward they then took 
their way ; and the vast spaces of the American continent 
are still waiting for the Christianity and Republicanism that 
have so rapidly and firmly taken possession of that compara- 
tively small belt called the United States. It is true that 
these influences were, for a time, felt along the northern bor- 
der of Africa. Egypt and Carthage were once civilized ; 
and a very vigorous Christianity, for three centuries, erected 
its altar, and kept itsfires bright, along the southern shore of 
the Mediterranean. But Egypt, though African in nature 
and blood, derived its ideas from Asiatic sources ; and its 
place in history is Asiatic rather than African. That ancient 
and wonderful pantheistic civihzation which built Thebes 
and the pyramids, was but the corrupted remains of a yet 
more ancient Asiatic monotheism ; as South tells us that 
" an Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens 
but the rudiments of paradise." Carthage was Phoenician ; 
and when both Egypt and Carthage were absorbed into 
Rome, North- Africa belonged much more to the European 
than to the properly African quarter of the globe. The great 
continent, then, notwithstanding all these attempts at ap- 
proach for thousands of years, lies lone and solitary. It is 
out of all historical connections ; so much so, that the gene- 
ralizing Hegel, after a very brief characterization of it, in his 
Philosophy of History, dismisses it with the remark : " We 
now leave Africa, and shall make no further mention of it. 
That which we understand by Africa proper, is totally desti- 
tute of a history ; is totally unopened and undeveloped ; 
and can, therefore, be merely hinted at, on the threshold of 
Universal History." ^ 

Now there is something in this fact, that inspires expecta- 
tion. It may be vague, but it is large and full. The mode 
and manner may be left to conjecture or imagination ; but 
the fact that one whole quarter of the globe has never yet 
been visited by the great influences of religion, law, and let- 

1 Hegel's Werke, IX., 123. 



ters, taken in connection with the fact that these influences 
are a part of the plan and destination of God in reference to 
the ivhole world and the whole human family, lead to the 
confident faith that this will not always be so. Nature, it 
w^as said, abhors a vacuum. Empty spaces will be filled 
and peopled. History treads no step backward. Her voice 
cries : " Ever onward ! " — as the guiding Genius, according 
to Schiller, continually sounded in the ear of Columbus on 
the gray waste of waters : " Ever westward ! Ever to the 
West ! " Who expects that population, law, and manners, 
will ever flow eastward again, from the Alleghanies or the 
Rocky Mountains ? Who expects that the great changes 
and alterations of the future are to take place on the old 
theatres of Assyria, Macedonia, Greece, and Rome ; or on 
the more recent, yet already antiquated arenas of Modern 
Europe ? The winds rush where there is vacancy. The 
great historic currents of the next half-millennium, must 
disembogue where they find room. 

The fact, then, that there is no pre-occupancy, and no ef- 
fete civilization, in the African world, is a ground of expec- 
tancy and of courage in regard to it. It is a negative prepa- 
ration for great results when the time arrives. 

2. A second ground of confident hope in reference to the 
future of Africa, is found in the qualities of the African 
nature. 

The characteristics of the African man are still almost as 
unknown as those of the African soil or the African flora. 
There are two reasons for this. In the first place, the African 
has never been in a situation where the depth and reserve of 
his nature has been drawn upon. Only the superficies of his 
being has been called into exercise ; so that his real and true 
manhood lies as hidden as the sources of the Nile. In the 
second place, and as a consequence of this, only his surface- 
traits and characteristics have appeared in his portraiture. 
These, moreover, having been exorbitantly unfolded, because 
there has been none of the balance and moderation of a 
deeper education and culture, have been as extravagantly 
depicted. The black man in literature is, therefore, either a 



8 

weakling or a caricature. The comic side of him, alone, 
comes into view. The single sonnet of Wordsworth upon 
the chieftain Toussaint, and the " sparkles dire of fierce, vin- 
dictive song," from the American Whittier, are almost the 
only literary allusions to the sublime and tragic elements in 
the negro's nature and condition ; certainly the only allusions 
that, without any abatement, and introduction of ludicrous 
traits, ally him solely with human 

"... exultations, agonies, 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 

The African nature is the tropical nature. All the races 
that have hitherto struggled upon the arena of history have 
belonged to the temperate zone. The Egyptian, the Assy- 
rian, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek, the Macedonian, 
the Roman, the Goth, the Frank, the Englishman, the Anglo- 
American — all lived north of Cancer. And the fact that thus 
far the inter-tropical portion of the globe has furnished few or 
none of the elements of human history, is very often cited to 
to prove that it can furnish none. It has almost come to be an 
axiom that the hot zone cannot ripen man. Brazil may crys- 
tallize diamonds of the purest water, and Africa may distil 
the most elaborate juices and gums ; but high intelligence 
and free will must grow up beneath northern skies. 

Now, it is undoubtedly true that the fallen human being 
needs stimulation, and that sinful man has done best when 
he has been crowded from the outside. Easy and pleasant 
circumstances have always proved too much for his feeble 
virtue. Hence, though he was created in Paradise, and lap- 
ped in elysium so long as he could bear it, yet, the very mo- 
ment he unfitted himself for such perpetual peace and joy, 
he was driven out among the thorns and thistles, and com- 
pelled to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow. In conse- 
quence of human apostasy, then, and for no other reason, 
the general movement of human history has been in climes 
and under skies that have tasked man, and have fretted him 
to action. While, therefore, it is conceded that the colder 
zones and the harder soils have been favorable, like the primi- 



tive curse of labor itself, to the best unfolding of an imperfect 
and a corrupt humanity, it still remains true that man was 
originally made for an outward world of genial warmth, of 
luxuriant growth, and of beauty. The primitive man was 
nude ; his light labor was merely to prune away luxuriance ; 
and his spiritual mind, sanctified by direct intercourse with 
angel, seraph, and the Eternal Mind, could both endure and 
profit by the otherwise enervating bliss and beauty of Eden. 
This original intent and adaptation of the Creator, war- 
rants the belief, that as there are some circumstances and in- 
fluences under a temperate sky that are favorable to human 
development, so there are some, also, beneath a torrid one. 
Wherever man can go and live, there he can grow and thrive. 
Wisdom rejoiceth in all the habitable parts of the earth ; and 
her delights are with all the sons of men. 

What, then, are the fundamental peculiarities of the Afri- 
can, or of man within the tropics, that afford ground for faith 
and confidence that human nature will here also, in due sea- 
son, exhibit a culture and character unique and fine ? 

Before proceeding to give only the very brief answer 
which the time allows to this question, it is nec( ssary to di- 
rect attention to the comprehensiveness of the word " Afri- 
can." We mean by it, and it properly denotes, a physical 
and mental structure that belongs to the African continent 
as a whole, in the same sense that the " Asiatic " belongs to 
Asia, and the " European " belongs to Europe. The term, 
therefore, includes a variety of races ; all, however, charac- 
terized by certain common traits. From the mouths of the 
Nile to the Cape of Good Hope, the observing traveller will 
find a primary type of mankind different from the Shemitic, 
and different from the Japhetic ; a style of man which is 
original and sui-generis ; and the minor varieties of which 
can easily be accounted for by the physical changes that 
are made by varieties in the modes of living, and particu- 
larly in the degrees of proximity to the burning equatorial 
line. 

It is the misfortune of Africa that only the most degraded 
portion of its population have been its representatives be- 



10 

fore the world. The enslaved and thereby imbruted negro 
is the only specimen from which the civHized world obtains 
its ideas, and draws its conclusions, as to the dignity and 
capabilities of the tropical man. But the coast negro, as we 
shall soon have occasion to see, is, in his best estate, merely 
the extreme of the African type ; and even he has not yet 
been seen in his best estate. What would be thought of a 
generalization in respect to the native traits and capacities 
of the whole Celtic stock, — of the entire blood of polished 
France, and eloquent Ireland, and the gallant Scotch High- 
lands, — that should be deduced from the brutish descendants 
of those Irish who were driven out of Ulster and South Down 
in the time of Cromwell ; men now of the most repulsive 
characteristics, " with open, projecting mouths, prominent 
and exposed gums, advancing cheek-bones, depressed noses ; 
height, five feet two inches, on an average ; bow-legged, 
abortively featured ; their clothing, a wisp of rags ; spectres 
of a people that were once well-grown, able-bodied, and 
comely.-' But such a judgment would be of equal value 
with that narrow estimate of the natural traits and charac- 
teristics of the inhabitants of one entire quarter of the globe, 
which rests upon an acquaintance with a small portion of 
them, a mere infinitesimal of them, carried into a foreign land 
and reduced to slavery. 

The African seems to differ from the European and the 
Asiatic by a fuller, more profuse, and more sensuous organi- 
zation. He is emphatically the child of the Earth and the 
Son. His tissues are not compact, tough, and fibrous, like 
those of the more northern races. On the contrary, they 
are tumid, and betoken a luxurious soul. The organs of the 
senses — the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears — are called "rich," 
in the phrase of the physiognomist ; and, in the ex- 
treme ts'pes, are animal and coarse. Man is like the earth 
he lives upon ; and the African man corresponds to that 
tropical soil and climate, in which every seed swells and 
sprouts with the rank luxuriance of a jungle. The great 
generical feature in the African, then, is richness and fulness 
in the physical organization ; and, in proof that it is so, we 
shall cite the testimony of travellers and physiologists. 



11 

The French Denon tells us that " instead of the sharp fea- 
tures, the keen, animated, and restless visages, the lean and 
active figures of the Arabian," he finds " in the land of the 
Pharaohs, full but delicate and voluptuous forms ; counte- 
nances sedate and placid ; round and soft features ; with 
eyes long, almond-shaped, half-shut and languishing, and 
turned up at the outer angles, as if habitually fatigued by the 
light and heat of the sun ; thick lips, full and prominent ; 
mouths large, but cheerful and smiling ; complexions dark, 
ruddy, and coppery ; and the whole aspect displaying, as 
one of the most graphic delineators among modern travel- 
lers has observed, the genuine African character, of which 
the Negro is the exaggerated and extreme representation." i 
Blumenbach's examinations of the Egyptian mummies led 
him to the belief that there are three varieties in the physi- 
ognomy expressed in Egyptian paintings and sculptures. 
But one of these was the Ethiopian, which, he says, " coin- 
cides with the descriptions given of the Egyptians by the an- 
cients, and is chiefly distinguished by prominent jaws, tur- 
gid lips, a broad flat nose, and protruding eye-balls," 2 
" Among the modern Copts," says Prichard, " many travel- 
lers have remarked a certain approximation to the Negro. 
Volney says that they have a yellowish, dusky complexion, 
resembling neither the Grecian nor Arabian ; and adds that 
they have a puffed visage, swollen eyes, flat nose, and thick 
lips, and bear much resemblance to mulattoes." ^ Ledyard, 
whose testimony Prichard remarks is of the more value as 
he had no theory to support, says : " I suspect the Copts to 
have been the origin of the Negro race : the nose and lips 
correspond with those of the Negro. The hair, wherever I 
can see it among the people here (the Copts), is curled, not 
like that of the Negroes, but like that of the mulattoes." * 

But if the Egyptians and Copts exhibit the full, sensuous 
and luxurious organization of the African, and properly be- 
long to the African race, it certainly will not be difficult to 
establish the same claim for all the remaining dwellers on the 



1 Prichard's Natural History of Man, pp. 151, 15S 
» Prichard, p. 156. 3 i^jd. p. 153. 



* Ibid. p. 159 



12 

continent. These were nearest to Asia and Europe, and felt 
most of foreign influences ; and yet the type could not be 
changed : the round cheek, the full, protuberant eye, the dark 
hue, could not be converted into their contraries. 

Passing southward, into the burning heart of Africa, we 
find the tropical man in yet greater intensity and power. 
The races of Soudan display the fervid type of humanity 
fully formed, and in the highest degree. There are varie- 
ties in this great central region ; the lowest being found on 
the Guinea coast, and the higher ones meeting the traveller 
as he rises those great terraces by which the continent lifts 
itself up from the sea. The Negroes of the Gold Coast, 
though dwelling amidst miasm and fever, and feeling only 
the very worst influences of European intercourse, are never- 
theless characterized by Barbot as " generally well-limbed 
and well-proportioned ; having good oval faces, sparkling 
eyes, eye-brows lofty and thick ; mouths not too large ; 
clean, white, and well-arranged teeth ; fresh red lips, not so 
thick and pendent as those of Angola, nor their noses so 
broad." ^ " Among the Ashantee tribe of this same Guinea 
race," says Bowditch, " are to be seen, especially among the 
higher orders, not only the finest figures, but, in many in- 
stances, regular Grecian features, with brilliant eyes, set 
rather obliquely in the head." ^ 

Of the Senegambian nations, the Mandingoes are re- 
markable for their industry ; and, of all the inter-tropical 
races have shown the greatest energy of character. Their 
features are regular, their character generous and open, and 
their manners gentle. Their hair is of the kind termed com- 
pletely woolly. The Fulahs, another Senegambian people, 
forge iron and silver, and work skilfully in leather and wood, 
and fabricate cloth. An intelligent French traveller describes 
them as fine men, robust and courageous, understanding 
commerce, and travelling as far as to the Gulf of Guinea. 
The color of their skin is a kind of reddish-black, their coun- 
tenances are regular, and their hair longer and not so wool- 
ly as those of the common Negroes.^ 

1 Prichard, p. 306. ^ Ibid. p. 307. » Ibid. p. 297. 



13 

These statements may be overdrawn in some particulars, 
and further exploration is undoubtedly required in order to 
form a sure and completely satisfactory judgment respecting 
the tribes of Soudan. But, certainly, all the information 
thus far obtained, goes to evince that this Negro-land is fil- 
led up with no puny populations, but with barbaric races of 
a powerful structure, — the bone and muscle out of which a 
Christian civilization shall hereafter form a powerful style 
of man. 

Finally, threading our way downward, from the terraces 
to the southern-ward slope of the African continent, we find 
the Hottentot and Kafir, the most degraded of the African 
races, yet owing the excess of their degradation, by which 
they fall below the other African races, to the contact and 
influence of a corrupt European civilization. Unless a gen- 
uine Christian influence shall eventually be thrown in upon 
them by missions, by education, and by commerce, it was, 
indeed, as one remarks, an ill-omened hour when a Chris- 
tian navigator descried the Cape of Storms. The Hottentot, 
by war and vices, has to a great extent degenerated into the 
Bushman ; but the Kafir still retains his aboriginal traits. 
Professor Lichtenstein describes them as follows : " They 
are tall, strong, and their limbs well proportioned ; their color 
is brown ; their hair, black and woolly ; they have the high 
forehead and prominent nose of the Europeans, the thick lips 
of the Negroes, and the high cheek bones of the Hottentots."^ 

This rapid survey of the inhabitants of the continent, 
from north to south, justifies us, then, in attributing a com- 
mon continental character to them all, — and a continental 
character that is neither feeble nor emasculated ; but, on the 
contrary, one that is muscular, arterial, and prodigal. There 
is a generical type of the African nature, constituted by the 
assemblage of certain physical and mental characteristics, 
which may be found all over the African continent, whereby 
this portion of the globe becomes as distinct and peculiar as 
Asia, or Europe, or America. And it is from this inter-tropi- 

1 Prichard. p. 317. 
9 



14 

cal humanity that we are to deduce a ground of belief and 
confidence that Ethiopia will yet stretch out her hands to 
God, and that Africa is finally to acquire a place in the uni- 
versal history of man on the globe. 

The chief characteristic of the African nature is the union^ 
in it, of recipiency with passion. The African is docile. He 
has nothing of the hard and self-asserting nature of the Goth. 
He is indisposed (like the dweller of the cold and stimulat- 
ing zones) to stamp his own individuality upon others. On 
the contrary, his plastic, ductile, docile nature receives influ- 
ence from every side, gladly and genially. It is not probable 
that great empires will be built up on the African continent, 
that will extend their sway over other parts of the globe, — 
as the Persian sought to obtain rule in Europe, but was 
thwarted by Greece ; or as the Roman extended his domin- 
ion over both Asia and Africa. The lust of empire will 
probably never run in African blood ; for, foreign conquest 
requires a stern, §elf-reliant, indocile, ambitious nature, 
which would force itself upon other races and regions ; and 
of this, the tropical man has little or nothing. It is rather 
to be expected that the African will confine himself to his 
own home, within the tropics, and will there take up, into 
his own rich and receptive nature, the great variety of ele- 
ments and influences that will be furnished by other races 
and portions of the globe. 

Under such circumstances, a unique and remarkable de- 
velopment of human nature must occur. A new form of 
national life will take rise. For this plastic character, this 
deep and absorbing receptivity, will be an alluvium, in 
which all seeds that arc planted will strike a long root, 
and shoot up a luxuriant growth. National history, thus far, 
exhibits stimulant natures, and stimulant characteristics. 
The types of nationality that figure in the past, have gene- 
rally been moulded from this sort of material, — a species 
which has reached its height in the Anglo-Saxon. This 
quality is, indeed, a strong, intense, and grand one ; and 
we are the last to disparage its worth. The triumphs of 
modern Christianity, and modern Civilization, are intimately 



15 

connected with its powerful and persistent action in indi- 
viduals and nations. But this tense and stimulant nature, 
characteristic of man in the northern zone, has its deficien- 
cies, also, like everything human. In isolation, and after 
long strain, it becomes wiry, hard, brittle, broken. It would 
not be well that it should be the sole type of humanity ; or 
that no other elements than it can furnish, should enter into 
the texture and fabric of national or individual life, from 
generation to generation. The Saxon himself, in order to his 
own preservation even, as well as his own best development^ 
needs some infusion of equatorial elements. It would be well 
if his already over-wrought stimulancy could be somewhat 
tranquillized and enriched by the languor and sluggishness 
of the tropics. It would be well if the hollow features of (he 
Anglo-American could assume somewhat of the rounded 
fulness of the Sphinx's or the Memnon's face ; if his eager 
and too shallow eye, could be made bulbous and deep, like 
that of Soudan. 

This, then, is the groundwork of the coming nationalities 
in Africa. It is a mild, docile, musing, and recipient nature, 
which is to drink in all the influences that shall pour forth 
from the old, and perhaps then declining civilizations of the 
other zones. It is the artist's nature, open at every pore, sen- 
sitive in every globule and cell of tissue, pulsing with a 
warm and somewhat slumbrous life, — a deep base for a 
high structure. 

But this lethargic quality in the tropical man is allied with 
an opposite one. He is also a creature of passion. In the 
phrase of Mark Antony, there is a " fire that quickens Ni- 
lus' slime." Like his own clime, the inhabitant of the trop- 
ics combines great antagonisms in his constitution. This 
slumber of his nature is readily stirred into wildest rage, — 
as the heavy and curtained air of the equator, which has 
hung dense and still for days and weeks, is suddenly dis- 
parted by electric currents, and, in an instant, is one wide, 
livid blaze of lightning. This quality, like all counterbalanc-. 
ing ones, is not strictly contrary to the one that has just been 
described. Were it so, the one would neutralize and kill the 



16 

other. There would be no interpenetration of the two, if 
nothing but the relation of sheer and mere contrariety, like 
that between fire and water, obtained between these two 
qualities in the African nature. It is antithesis, not contra- 
riety. For this very passion itself originates in, and springs 
right out of, the lethargy. The nature has been slumbrous 
and dormant, only that it may, at the proper time, be fiery 
and active. The one balances, not neutralizes, the other. 
Were there an unintermittent draught and strain upon the 
entire man, there could never be this tropical vehemence. 
But the slumber is recuperative of the constitutional force ; 
and, in and by the osciUations of passion and lethargy, the 
wondrous life goes on. 

That the African is a passionate being, is attested by all 
history. No one can look at the features of the Meranon, 
without perceiving that beneath that placid contour there 
sleeps a world of passion. Shakspeare has given Cleopatra 
to us in her own proud words : 

" I am fire and air ; my other elements 
I give to baser life." 

The influences of Christianity do not destroy, but refine 
and sanctify, this quality. The North- African church of the 
first centuries was full of divine fire. It flashes in the labor- 
ing but powerful rhetoric of Tertullian. It glows like an- 
thracite in the thoughts of Augustine, whose symbol in the 
church is a flaming heart ; and over whose mighty and pas- 
Bionate sensualism the serene, spiritualizing, and Divine 
power of Christianity ultimately, and only after an elemental 
war within like that of chaos, wrought an ethereal and saintly 
transformation that has not yet been paralleled in the his- 
tory of the church. 

But we need not go into the distant past, or into the dis- 
tant African continent, for evidence upon this point. We 
cannot look into the eye of the degraded black man who 
meets us in our daily walks, without perceiving that he be- 
longs to the torrid zone. The eye, more than any other fea- 
ture, is the index of the soul, and of the soul's life. That 



17 

full, liquid, opaline orb, that looks out upon us from face and 
features that are stolid, or perhaps repulsive, testifies to the 
union of passion and lethargy in this fellow-creature. That 
large and throbbing ball, that sad and burning glance, though 
in a degraded and down-trodden man, betoken that he be- 
longs to a passionate, a lyrical, and an eloquent race. 

This tropical eye, when found in conjunction with Cau- 
casian features, is indicative of a very remarkable organiza- 
tion. It shows that tremulous sensibilities are reposing upon 
a base of logic. No one could fix his gaze, for a moment, 
upon that great Northern statesman who has so recently 
gone down to his grave, without perceiving that this rare 
combination was the physical substrate of what he was, 
and what he did. That deep-black iris, cinctured in a pearl- 
white sclerotic, and, more than all, that fervid torrid glance 
and gleam, were the exponents and expression of a tropical 
nature ; while the thorough-bred Saxonism of all the rest of 
the physical structure indicated the calm and massive 
strength that underlay and supported all the passion and all 
the fire. It was the union of two great human types in a 
single personality. It was the whole torrid zone enclosed 
and upheld in the temperate. 

It will be apparent from this analysis, if it be a correct 
one, that the African nature possesses a latent capacity fully 
equal, originally, to that of the Asiatic or the European. 
Shem and Japhet sprang from the very same loins with Ham. 
God made of one blood those three great races by which he re- 
populated the globe after the deluge. This blending of two 
such striking antitheses as energy and lethargy, the soul and 
the sense ; this inlaying of a fine and fiery organization in- 
to drowsy flesh and blood ; this supporting of a keen and 
irritable nerve by a tumid and strong muscular cord, — what 
finer combination than this is there among the varied types 
of mankind ? The objection urged against the possibility of 
a historical progress in Africa, similar to that in the other 
continents, upon the ground that the original germ and ba- 
sis was an inferior one, — an objection that shows itself, if 
not theoretically, yet practically, in the form of inaction, and 

2* 



18 

an absence of enthusiasm and enterprising feeling when the 
claims of Africa are spoken of, — this objection is invalid. 
The philosophic and the philanthropic mind must, both 
alike, rise above the prejudices of an age, and look beyond 
a present and transient degradation, that has been the result 
of centuries of ignorance and slavery. If this be done, the 
philosopher sees no reason for refusing to apply the same law 
of progress and development (provided the external circum- 
stances be favorable, and the necessary conditions exist) 
to the tropical man, that he does to the man of the temper- 
ate or the arctic zones ; and no reason for doubting that, in 
the course of time, and under the genial influences of the 
Christian religion — the mother of us all — human nature 
will exhibit all its high traits and qualities in the black races, 
as well as in the white. And certainly the philani hropist, 
after a wide survey of history ; after tracing back the modern 
Englishman to the naked Pict and bloody Saxon ; after 
comparing the filthy savage of Wapping and St. Giles 
with the very same being and the very same blood in the 
dra^ving-rooms of Belgrave Square — has every reason for 
keeping up his courage and going forward with his work. 
There have been much stranger transformations in history 
than the rise of African republics, and African civilizations, 
and African literatures will be. 

But how is the way to be prepared for this ? From what 
point or points, and through what instrumentalities, is the 
alteration to commence ? It is this second branch of the 
subject, which we now proceed to briefly examine. 

1. It is natural to expect that the movements of God's 
providence, in the future will be very much like those of the 
past ; and that civilization and culture will, hereafter, pass 
into the unenlightened parts of the globe in very much the 
same way they have heretofore. But history shows that this 
has uniformly taken place by the exodus of colonies. Re- 
ligion, law, and letters are not indigenous, but exotic, in all 
the past career of man on the globe. One race hands the 
torch of science to another. One quarter of the globe is both 
the parent and teacher of another. There are autochthones 



19 

nowhere. There are no strictly self-taught men anywhere. 
And in the last examination, and at the primary origin and 
source, we are compelled to rise above earth and man alto- 
gether, and find the first beginnings of knowledge and reli- 
gion in the skies. From first to last, there is an imparting 
act from the higher to the lower. The more inteUigent 
makes revelations to the less intelligent. The genealogy 
cannot stop short of the Creator himself. Cainan was the 
son of Enos, " which was the son of Seth, which was the 
son of Adam, which was the son of God." 

These changes and movements in human civilization are 
particularly visible at those points where civilization passes 
from one continent to another continent. The knots in the 
grape-vine reveal where the life gathers and concentrates in 
order to a new expansion. Europe received letters and civ- 
ilization from Asia. The little district of Greece was the 
radiating point ; for Rome received them from Greece, and 
gave them to all her empire. But the original sources of 
Greek culture were colonists, few and feeble, from Egypt, 
PhcEnicia, and Asia Minor. The Egyptian Cecrops and Da- 
naus brought over the seeds of civility to Attica and Ai'gos, 
fifteen centuries before our era. The Phoenician Cadmus 
carried over an Asiatic alphabet soon after. And the Lydian 
Pelops soon followed with his wealth and knowledge of the 
mechanic arts.^ But the consequences of this immigration 
from another continent were not felt, to any great extent, 
upon Europe at large, until a thousand years had rolled by. 
The Greek, with all his treasures of wisdom and of beauty, 
was shut up from the " barbarian " world, until the Roman 
broke down the barrier, and Grecian culture then had free 
course. And if we should allow a millennium for a colony 
upon the African coast to diffuse law, manners, letters, and 
religion, over the African continent, it would be as rapid a 
movement as that to which Ancient Rome and the whole 
Modern World owe their secular civilization. 

The radiating points for the Western Continent were the 

1 Heercn's Ancient Greece, Chapter III. 



20 

^ ' . and more especially ihe Brinsh. colonies. The 

nr here has been much mor^e rapid than anything in 
the hisToiy of the Old Weald- And yet, after more than rwo 
cenniries, not one qnairer of ihis Wesiem hemisphere is 
folly nnder the induence of Chrisrian civilization. 

The hisTory of the past, then, indicates that Amca mnst 
receive religion, law. and leners in the same \ray that the 
oiher continents have received them. They mnst be given 
to her. The colonist mnst carry the seeds of civilization 
aad of empire into the tropical world. Christendom o\ves 
cx^nies to the only j>oriion of the globe that has never yet 
been a part of Christendom. Europe and America ought to 
adopt the unerance of the great Apostle to Europe — an ut- 
terance to \rliich both of them, under God. owe their religion 
and their culture, more than to any other single human 
cause — and say : ~ We are debtors, as much as in us lies. 
to Amca.~ Each. of them ought to prove its sincerity, by 
ent ering with energy upon a great colonizing movement, 
and planting Christian colonies all along the coast. 

2. In the second place, it is the colonist of African bloody 
upon whom the chief reliance must be placed, so long as the 
colonizing period continues. For the tropical climate neces- 
siiates the sluggish blood of the tropical man. It is certain 
death to expose the nervous, high-strunsr. and never-relaxed 
nature of the Caucasian, to the fervors of the burning zone, 
and ihe dam|>s of an equatorial night-falL The dweller in 
this pcation of the globe must be able to rise and fall, like a 
barometer, with the climate : to act and toil vehemently for 
a time, and then to pass into a recuperative inaction. All 
the colonists of history have gone from temperate to tem- 
perate regions. The true colonist for the tropics, then, is 
the man of the tropics. It may be that the white man can 
live upon the high grounds of the interior, when the hean of 
Africa shall have been opened to commerce, and made yet 
more salubrious by - ~ - — ire and civilization ; but, for a 
long time to cc»me, :. . . man must lay the foundations 
of empire and civilization, and build up the superstmctnre. 

3. And thirdly, w^ithout intending to disparage, in the 



21 

least, the other agencies that have been and will be em- 
ployed, all present indications go to show that it is the Libe- 
rian colonist who must take the lead in this great movement. 
For the Liberian is the tropical man more or less penetrated 
by the cold and calm, ideas of the North. He carries with 
him some American discipline and education. He has not 
lost his ancestral traits ; for, while in bondage, he has still 
lived upon the borders of that great zone from which his fore- 
fathers were stolen. He can not only endure, but he loves 
a hot and languid clime. And yet he has felt the stimu- 
lation of that active race among whom he has lived. The 
wrath of man has praised God. The American negro has 
been made aggressive and enterprising by his enslavement. 
He has been fitted to be a colonist, and to impress himself 
upon the passive and plastic millions of Africa, by a pro- 
cess that involves awful guilt in the human authors of it. 
The Liberian colonist has, thus far, obtained a firmer foot- 
hold than any other, upon the African continent. He has 
established a republic whose independence is acknowledged 
by the leading po\vers of the world ; and whose nationality 
has now entered into the history of nations. There is a defi- 
nite point of departure, and a living germ of expansion in 
Liberia. 

Furthermore, this Liberian republic is a really Christian 
State. There is not now, probably, an organized common- 
wealth upon the globe, in which the principles of Christianity 
are applied wdth such a childlike directness and simplicity, 
to the management of public affairs, as in Liberia. New 
England, in the days of her childhood, and before the con- 
flicting interests of ecclesiastical denominations introduced 
jealousies, — Geneva, in the time of John Calvin, when the 
church and the state were practically one and the same 
body, now acting through the consistory, and now through 
the council, — in fine, all religious commonwealths in their 
infancy, and before increasing wealth and luxury have stu- 
pefied conscience and dimmed the moral perception, fur- 
nish examples of the existing state of things in the African 
republic. Even the common school education, which the Li- 



22 

berinn c-onstitvition provides for the whole population, has 
been given by Ihe missionary, and in connection with the 
most direct religious instructions and influences. The state 
papers of the Liberian Executive and Legislature breathe a 
grave and serious spirit, like that which inspires the docu- 
ments of our own colonial and revolutionary periods. 

It is not necessary, in the heart of New England, and be- 
fore such an audience as this, to enlarge upon the signifi- 
cance of the fact that the most influential radiating point 
for civilization throughout Africa, is a religious republic. 
No reflecting man can ponder lhe fact, and think of all it 
involves, without ejaculating, from the depths of his soul : 
" God save the Commonwealth." 

Such, then, is the general nature of the argument for 
African colonies, and for the American Colonization Soci- 
ety. The race itself, which it proposes to elevate and Chris- 
tianize, is one of the three great races in and through which 
God intended, after the total destruction of all antecedent 
ones by the flood, to re-people the globe and subdue it- 
The tropical man and lhe tropical mind is destined, sooner 
or later, to enter into human history, and to have a history. 
It is in this faith that the Society, whose anniversary we are 
celebrating, toils and prays. It has been its misfortune that 
its vision has been clearer than that of others, and that it 
has, consequently, cherished plans that have appeared im- 
practicable. But this is always the misfortune of faith 
within the sacred sphere, and of genius within the secular. 
Each of them may say to the torpid soul : 

" I hear a voice thou <!anst not licar ; 
I see a liand tliou canst not see." 

Through good report, and through evil report, this Soci- 
ety has pursued its straight-onward course, and now begins 
to see what it foresaw. It sees four hundred miles of the Af- 
rican coast secured, by fair purchase and peaceable occupa- 
tion, to the area of freedom. It sees this coast-line widened 
into a surface of fifty miles towards the interior, and dcs- 



28 

tined to stretch rapidly inland and coastwise. It sees the 
slave trade extinct not only within Liberian jurisdiction, but 
shrinking away from the remoter borders of it. It sees ten 
thousand colonists from America, with their descendants, 
mingling with, and giving tone to, three hundred thousands 
of native population. It sees a large annual commerce com- 
ing into existence, and one that is increasing in rapid ratio. 
It sees a regular republican government working, firmly and 
equally, through the forms of law, and administered with 
singular prudence and energy. It sees a system of educa- 
tion, from the primary to the collegiate, exerting its elevat- 
ing influence upon the mass of the people, and an incipient 
literature, in state-papers and public addresses. It sees the 
church of Christ crowning all other institutions, and giving 
direction to the mind and heart of the rising state. 

Looking back, then, over the brief forty years of its exist- 
ence, and pointing to what God has wrought by it, is not 
the American Colonization Society justified in boldly ap- 
pealing to the philanthropist for the means of stiU greater 
benefits to the African, and to Africa ? For the time has 
now arrived for enlarged operations. Africa is evidently up- 
on the eve of great events. The explorations of Barth, and 
Vogel, and Anderson, and Moffat, and Livingston ; the Eng- 
lish Niger expeditions ; the curiosity and courage of indi- 
vidual explorers, in search of the head waters of the Nile ; 
the discovery of fine stalwart races all through the interior ; 
the very rapid growth of African commerce, at points upon 
both the Eastern and Western coasts ; the very mystery, it- 
self, which overhangs this part of the globe, the more stimu- 
lating because all the rest of the world lies in comparative 
sun-light : all these things combined tend to the belief that, 
comparatively, more will be discovered, and more will be 
done, in and about Africa, within the coming century, than 
in and about any other quarter of the globe. The other con- 
tinents have had their hour of deliverance. The hour for Af- 
rica has now, for the first time, come. Her scores of races 
prove to have capacities for Christianity and self-government. 
The American emancipationist is ready and waiting to send 



24 

out, among them, hundreds and thousands of Americanized 
colonists. Shall not the philanthropists of this land now 
make full proof of the Colonizing method? — that method 
which was employed with such vigor by Rome in Romaniz- 
ing the barbarians whom she conquered — that method by 
which Britain, the modern Rome, has made her drum-beat 
to be heard round the globe ? And, especially, shall not the 
church of Christ secure a foothold and a protection for its 
missionaries in Africa, by helping to extend the influence of 
those Christian colonies which have hitherto been their best 
earthly protection, and in connection with which alone (so 
the history of past missions in Africa, for four hundred years, 
plainly shows) can missionary operations be carried on with 
permanent success ? 



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